Tag: Bournemouth

For most of us, the idea of drinking alcohol whilst at work would be to stretch the imagination just a little too far. The days of long, boozy lunches in the pub and afternoons spent trying desperately to stay awake are very much a thing of the past, and our productivity is, if we are honest with ourselves, all the better for it. For those that own the means of production, however, there often seems to be a different set of rules. Those that own a company have the licence – subject to any waves of bad publicity that may come with such behaviour – to do as they please, and the extent to which status is used as a fig leaf for pretty disgraceful behaviour remains higher than it ever should do in anything approaching a civilised country. All of which brings us back to Eddie Mitchell, the chairman of AFC Bournemouth, who has found himself back in the headlines following further eccentric behaviour during his club’s home match against Milton Keynes Dons. At half-time during this match – with his side already trailing by a single goal – that the wife of the Russian co-owner Maxim Demin was allowed to give part of the half-time team talk to the players. After the match – which ended, perhaps unsurprisingly, in a defeat thanks to that first half goal – Mitchell was...

It was a minor exchange among ‘readers’ comments’ in Bournemouth’s Daily Echo newspaper. But it summed up much about AFC Bournemouth under current chairman Eddie Mitchell. The exchange concerned the relationship between parent company, AFC Bournemouth Limited, and a company set up by Mitchell, AFCB’s then-largest individual shareholder, called Black Label Events (BLE), which runs catering and conferencing at Bournemouth’s Seward Stadium. One reader believed they were separate entities and that Bournemouth wasn’t “entitled to any profit” from BLE. “The way I read it,” another said, “isn’t (Mitchell) saying the opposite?” You could almost envisage Mitchell hanging up his “Mission Accomplished” banner. Property developer Mitchell’s disingenuousness has peppered his chairmanship of the club, and he came to national attention in September with behaviour which even FIFA President Sepp Blatter might have considered “a bit crass.” At a September the first fans’ forum, he told a dissenting supporter to “go and support Southampton.” And after Bournemouth’s 3-0 home defeat to Chesterfield nine days later, he took to the pitch, microphone in hand, to offer some (tired and) emotional suggestions to fans chanting for his departure. Events immediately surrounding these rants were expertly covered by Ian King at the time, but things had been brewing for ages. And post-rant events have provided more intrigue, and more trademark Mitchell disingenuousness. Since becoming chairman, in June 2009, Mitchell has carefully chosen his words,...

If the start of this season in League One has been notable for one thing, it has been for the under-achievement of those clubs which arguably over-achieved last season. After seven matches, the bottom four of Rochdale, Bournemouth, Leyton Orient and Exeter City are all clubs did extremely well when swimming against the current last season, but all are finding the going to be considerably more difficult this time around. This in itself shouldn’t be too much of a cause to be troubled over their well-being in a broader context, but in the case of one of them, AFC Bournemouth, a degree of discontent over the way that the club is being managed at present has, over the last seven days or so, blown up into something all the more extraordinary. Over the last decade or so, AFC Bournemouth has been a club which has had more than its fair share of financial difficulties. After its last stay in administration, the club’s take-over by local businessman Eddie Mitchell, who had previously been involved at Blue Square South club Dorchester Town, in June 2009 was supposed to usher in a new era of relative harmony and stability at the club. A little more than two years later, however, even though the club only narrowly missed out on a place in the League One play-offs at the end of last season...

Losing a ground doesn’t always mean moving to a new venue. AFC Bournemouth bulldozed Dean Court, spun it around ninety degrees, and rebuilt it as a three-sided ground. For Andy Smith, it might never be the same again. Can you write something about the old Dean Court, I was asked? Of course, I reply. No doubt I’ll fill it full of the standard ‘old ground’ clichés, but as you, the football fan, know, they’re clichés because they are grounded in fact. But why? How many construction workers do you hear hankering after the days they used to hang off of building sites with no safety equipment? Doctors wishing for the return of smallpox? Or East End dwellers longing for the re-instatement of their slums. The standard old ground was an accident waiting to happen. Crumbling terraces, poorly maintained safety barriers, half-time food that was, at best, a bi-weekly game of Russian roulette for your digestive tract. And at Dean Court it was all this and more. By the time the decision was finally taken to redevelop the ground it was effectively no decision at all. Build a new ground or have three stands condemned. The South End seemed to shrink every time you turned up, each week a further section was roped or fenced off. The Brighton Beach End, (so called because it was originally just a bank of...

In League One, the sense that this was to be the year of the south coast started to grow as winter turn to spring. Brighton & Hove Albion soared away at the top of the table, and as the home straight of the season came into view, the pre-season favourites Southampton also began to pull away into the distance, themselves securing an automatic promotion place with a couple of games of the season still to spare. All attention, then, turns to the end of season play-offs, and this evening brings the first of the second legs of the semi-finals between Huddersfield Town and AFC Bournemouth. For much of the autumn and winter, Huddersfield Town looked as likely as not to bag that second automatic promtion place. They begin this evening at Galpharm as the favourites ahead of Bournemouth, following a 1-1 draw at Dean Court at the weekend. Huddersfield finished the season in third place in the table, five points behind Southampton but seventeen ahead of Bournemouth, who sneaked home on the last day of the season, just ahead of Leyton Orient and Exeter City. Huddersfield supporters may well think that the sixteen point buffer should give them the definitive advantage over Bournemouth this evening, but season play-off watchers will be more than aware that end of season league positions can count for little over one hundred and eighty...